Lucas Pouille is coming off a three sets loss to Matthew Ebden that took 30 games to decide. In the losing effort, Pouille won 69 percent of his first serve points and 53 percent of his second serve points. Pouille really fell apart in his opening match after winning the first set, and a lot of it had to do with him winning just 28 percent of his total return points. Pouille has now lost six of his last eight matches overall, a funk that he can’t afford to have carry over to 2019. Pouille has five career wins over top-10 players, but all of those victories took place in 2016. Pouille has lost four of his last five matches on indoor hard court.

Alexander Zverev is coming off a three sets win over David Ferrer that took 33 games to decide. In the victory, Zverev won 81 percent of his first serve points and 43 percent of his second serve points. Zverev didn’t drop a single point in a deciding third set tiebreak and managed to get 77 percent of his first serves in play. Zverev is damn near impossible to beat when he’s serving well, as he puts too much pressure on his opponent to play perfect tennis. Zverev has now won 13 of his last 17 matches and didn’t show much rust in what was his first match in a little over a month. Zverev has won four straight matches on indoor hard court.

There’s no previous matches between these two players.

Things just aren’t getting any easier for Pouille, as he can’t buy a victory these days and is now taking a major step up in competition. Zverev has quickly become one of the more consistent players to back these days and his second serve is only going to improve with more reps. Pouille doesn’t stand much of a chance in his current form.

Randy Chambers

12/30/2018, 3:26 AM (EST) 1/3/2019, 3:53 AM (EST)

Randy Chambers has been with Sports Chat Place since 2014 and covers everything from the NFL to WNBA and tennis. Nobody works harder in this business in terms of content produced and amount of sports covered. Formerly a lead college football writer with Bleacher Report and has had his work featured at Fox Sports, CBS Sports and various other outlets.

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